


Kon Can Lift a Car (Up).

by anantipodean



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Superboy (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Bromance, Gen, absolute nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4765607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anantipodean/pseuds/anantipodean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim and Kon's Friday night plans are riding on a card game. Naturally things do not go according to Tim's plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kon Can Lift a Car (Up).

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SaniCaranza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaniCaranza/gifts).



> I shared the song 'I Can Lift a Car Up' by the amazingly talented Walk The Moon with my friend and super-beta, SaniCaranza, and she immediately requested I write something Tim/Kon that uses the line 'I can lift a car up all by myself.' 
> 
> Sadly, this is not Tim/Kon, but it is Kon being ridiculous and Tim suffering, and that is pretty much what Tim/Kon is all about.

“I can lift a car,” Kon said suddenly. 

The statement seemed extremely loud in the Titans Tower living room. Friday night, Kory had a date, Gar a media appearance, and Victor was backing up his systems in the basement. The rest of their teammates weren’t expected until the morning, so it was just Tim, Kon, and the deck of iron-plated cards.

Tim permitted himself a smirk, even though it was hidden by the cards he held. “Really.” 

“All by myself,” Kon raised his pinky. “Using only my little finger.” 

Tim snorted. He’d been deliberating over which of two cards to discard, but if Kon suddenly felt a need to bring his powers into the conversation, he was obviously struggling. Tim placed his seven on the table. “That’s not you. That’s your TTK.” 

Kon looked suddenly smug. Had that been the point? To get Tim to acknowledge his ridiculous power? Tim decided to accidentally kick Kon under the table in case. He did not want to have to go through that circus again. 

“The TTK is me. I am the TTK. I lift the car. Scratch that. I can lift an entire used car lot.” 

Tim rolled his eyes. He’d picked up a Queen, the first decent luck he’d had that round, so he discarded the second seven. Seriously, if he hadn’t shuffled the cards himself, he’d suspect Kon of cheating. Tim had won every single round except the one that had the rest of their evening’s plans riding on it. “Bad day at Smallville High?” 

“Yeah. But it just got better.” Kon placed his cards on the table. 

Tim had to blink before what he was looking at registered. All four sevens? “You did that on purpose!”

“Won the game? Yeah, I did.” Kon stretched, raising his hands in the laziest victory cheer as he lounged back in his chair, evidently intending to be a dick about this. 

“Don’t be obtuse. You goaded me into putting down my seven!” It had been masterfully done. Far, far too masterfully for Kon to have come up with it himself. Tim narrowed his eyes. “Who gave you the idea?” 

“What, you don’t think I could have come up with that on my own?” 

“In a word? No.” Tim began to gather the cards back together. There was a very small subset of people who knew Kon, knew Tim, and were willing to help Kon win. “It was Nightwing, wasn’t it?” Dick was going to hear about this. 

“It was not Nightwing--” Kon realized too late. 

“So you were helped.” 

“I still won! We said winner of the next game decides what we do, we never said anything about not cheating.” 

It hadn’t been an oversight. Tim had been confident that he’d be able to spot any of Kon’s attempts to win -- which made his loss even more aggravating. “Was it Damian? If you’ve been plotting with Damian--”

“You could not bribe me to plot with Damian. Seriously. You’ve met him, you know.”

“Steph?” 

“Just accept you lost unfair and square!” Kon stood. “C’mon. I know exactly what I want to do.” 

That could only bode terribly. Tim looked over his shoulder to the training room. He’d been itching to really let loose and spar with Kon all week, so he’d not thought twice about agreeing to Kon’s wager. Another mistake. “Oracle wouldn’t.” Would she? 

“If it bothers you that much, I’ll tell you,” Kon paused in the doorway that connected to the hall. “But only after we’re done.” 

“And what are we doing?” 

Kon smirked at him. It was the ineffably smug smirk, the one that indicated that Tim was in a lot of trouble and Kon was far too pleased with himself to care. It was the smirk that generally ended with Batman grounding him. 

Tim was going to murder whoever taught Kon how to cheat. “What is it?” 

“You’ll find out,” Kon said turning to float down the hall -- floating in an incredibly annoying way. “You’re gonna need your civvies. We need a supply run first.” 

“Supplies?” Tim trudged reluctantly after Kon. No way was this ending well. “It wasn’t Alfred, right? He’d never.” 

“Will you stop that?” Kon turned around again, settling his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Have a little more faith in me. You might even enjoy this.”

Kon’s hand was warm. He always was. Bruce had speculated that Kryptonians possessed higher than average body heat as a result of the energy processed from the sun, which completely contradicted several other things they knew about Kryptonian biology. They were still a mystery -- as was the fact that despite knowing for a fact that he would regret everything that followed immensely, Tim somehow found himself smiling. “I seriously doubt that, but fine. Where are we going?” 

“The supermarket.” 

 

Kon had refused to share plans, even when they were standing in the cereal aisle, but he’d taken the raisin bran off Tim, saying ‘the more sugar the better.’ Tim had switched out the Frosted Flakes for regular cornflakes while Kon had been looking at milk, but they were now sitting on the floor of Kon’s bedroom in the tower, surrounded by boxes of teeth-rotting cereal while Kon hooked up his laptop to the monitor of his large flatscreen TV.  
Things were starting to make sense. 

Not logical sense, but bizarre sense. Kon-sense. “They don’t count as Saturday morning cartoons if you’re watching them on Friday night, Kon.” 

“We’re watching them.” Kon pulled up youtube on his laptop. “And unless you want to make this an authentic sleepover, I suggest you stop complaining.” He hit play and scooted back to join Tim leaning against the end of his bed. 

Tim raised an eyebrow. He should just be thankful Kon had decided to restrict himself to a couple of hours. “Denver the Last Dinosaur?” He frowned at the screen. “I think I vaguely remember this one.” 

“Pretty much everyone our age does. That’s the weird thing. Everyone’s watched it, no one could tell me what it was about.” 

“You polled people?”

“Well -- no,” Kon picked up his bowl of Count Chocula. “But you know it is when you’re hanging out with people and they talk and you’re the only one not in on it.” 

Tim glanced at him. Kon was frowning at the screen with an attitude that Tim would have described as intense concentration--if they hadn’t been watching a green dinosaur with purple shades play the guitar. “I thought you got cartoons as part of your--” it was so hard to judge whether Kon was cool with talking about CADMUS or in one of his sensitive moods “--age-appropriate knowledge.”

“I did.” Kon shrugged. “But classic cartoons. Looney Tunes. The stuff the scientists grew up on. I missed the guitar playing dinosaurs.” 

Tim snorted, reaching behind him to grab one of Kon’s pillows as a cushion. “I’m beginning to think you might have got off easy.” Denver had not aged well. 

“You’re telling me. You actually got out of bed to watch this?” 

Tim took advantage of Kon’s focus to fill his bowl with the cornflakes. “I was a kid. I didn’t exactly have high standards for entertainment.” 

“Seriously. What guy old enough to be taking algebra hasn’t worked out that girls are a thing?” 

Tim elbowed him. “She’s someone’s kid sister. That’s why they don’t want her tagging along.”

“And rock promoters hang out at museums?” 

“We have saved the world on less plausible coincidences.” 

“True,” Kon conceded reluctantly. “Still. I don’t get why Superboy the animated series was cancelled and this wasn’t.” 

“Yours was far too violent for daytime TV. And the writing was atrocious--”

“Wait. You watched my show?” 

Tim was right. He was regretting everything. “Alfred might have recorded a few episodes. Before I made it clear I was not interested.” 

“So not interested that you watched it.” Kon was going to be smug about this for months. 

Diversion tactics. “Don’t look now, but I think that guy took your sunglasses.”

Kon was successfully distracted. “Wow. I cannot believe that villain had the perfect opportunity to say ‘that dino is mine-o’ and didn’t take it. Maybe there’s hope for this show after all.” 

It was weird. It should not have been fun but was. “So the dinosaur puts pink sunglasses on and no one notices him.”

“It could happen. I mean -- Superman.” Kon glanced over at him. “It was Clark, by the way.” 

Tim, distracted by the skateboarding dinosaur, didn’t immediately notice. “What?”

“Clark. Who told me how I might be able to throw you off your card game.” 

Tim stared. “Superman encouraged you to cheat at cards?” 

Kon shrugged. “He said we’d been working hard enough lately and it was about time we had a Friday night that didn’t involve danger, property destruction or responsibilities far beyond our years. He thought it might be good for us to act our age.”

Tim looked at the bowl of cereal on his lap and back at Kon. “I hate to break it to you, but we are the only teenagers in the world watching cartoons and eating cereal on a Friday night.” 

“Fine then. We’re acting my age.” 

Tim shook his head. “I’m pretty sure Clark just didn’t want to be stuck watching terrible eighties cartoons with you.” 

“Lighten up. This isn’t killing you.” Kon turned to the next youtube window. “Anyway, this one should be better. Everyone says it’s outrageous.” 

Tim had a sudden suspicion. “Truly, truly, truly outrageous?” 

“You’ve seen it too, huh.” Kon hit play.

“Unfortunately.” The song was going to be stuck in his head all weekend. Superman had a lot to answer for.


End file.
